The Almightier
How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin
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- US$14.99
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The complete story of how we came to worship money, and how we can stop greed from destroying everything.
The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and Wall Street rain-makers, then complain about “the system” being rigged, and wonder why the country doesn’t seem to work for the little guy anymore. Some blame the Deep State for income inequality and corruption, and others blame capitalism, but the truth is that these issues have much deeper roots: our devotion to money is a manmade invention that has transformed over thousands of years to replace religion as the foundation of our society, and it is tearing civilization apart.
In The Almightier, journalist Paul Vigna uncovers the forgotten history of money, tracing the uneasy and often accidental alliance between wealth and religion as it developed from ancient city-states to today’s secular world, where religious devotion has receded and greed has stepped in to fill the void. Through engaging anecdotes, original research, and fresh perspectives on the causes of the many challenges we face today, Vigna makes a compelling argument that money has no power apart from the power we give it.
We can build a better future, where we don’t need to choose between helping others and getting ahead. But we can’t repair the damage that greed has done until we understand how it took over our world in the first place.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Money and greed got a big assist from religion and then turned into a kind of religion, according to this accessible study from journalist Vigna (Guts). He starts with the invention of money in ancient Mesopotamia as an accounting system for debts owed to temples. From there, he goes on to argue that Jesus was crucified after preaching a general debt write-off, and covers the medieval church's suspicion of excessive wealth. A sea change occurred in Renaissance Italy, Vigna contends, with the rise of an ethos that saw amassing wealth as a godly pursuit if it was used for public benefit. He traces the secularization of this idea thanks to Adam Smith's notion that markets channel profit-seeking self-interest into collectively beneficial economic pursuits, and argues that 15th and 16th century colonialism was "the greatest explosion" of greed "the world has ever seen." Vigna's suggestions for how to smash the false idol of money include a proposal for printing $300 trillion to pay off the world's debt. Some readers may not be convinced by his notion that faith, not money printing or credit creation, drives inflation, though he's got a sense of humor about it: "that sound you just heard was the entire western economic establishment falling off its collective chair." This is sure to spark debate.
